Preimplantation Genetic Screening for Gender Selection

Gender selection lets you choose: boy or girl

Every hopeful parent seeking infertility treatment shares the same goal: a healthy baby. For some families, the sex of the baby is also important, for medical or personal reasons. Preimplantation genetic screening, or PGS, is a gender selection process that identifies the sex of each embryo created through in vitro fertilization, giving parents more choice than ever before possible.

Some parents choose PGS because they are concerned about “sex-linked” genetic disorders, such as hemophilia, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Turner syndrome or fragile X syndrome. Parents who want to break the chain of inheritable diseases can choose PGS to sort embryos by sex, virtually eliminating the risk of passing on sex-linked disorders.

In other cases, parents choose preimplantation genetic screening hoping to fulfill their dream of having a boy or a girl. Because IVF often results in multiple embryos, many people simply want to transfer only those that are both chromosomally normal and can help them achieve their family balancing goals.

Achieving balance with gender selection

For many years, sonogram technology has made it possible for parents to learn their baby’s gender before the baby is born. Now, PGS lets them get an even earlier glimpse of their baby’s sex.

At our New York fertility center, we strive to ensure our own balance through a unique philosophy on gender selection. We track our gender selection statistics carefully, seeking to achieve a 50/50 balance of male and female babies in our practice overall – the same statistical odds that occur without medical intervention.

The PGS gender selection process

There are many approaches to gender selection, but not all of them provide trustworthy results. At our New York fertility center, we use the most reliable technique available: preimplantation genetic screening. Here’s how it works:

The eggs are retrieved by Dr. Batzofin and fertilized by your partner’s or a donor’s sperm in our IVF lab.

A group of cells from each embryo is sent to a reference lab and examined to determine both sex and chromosomal normalcy.

A healthy embryo of the desired gender is transferred to the uterus.

Many women and couples undergoing IVF as an infertility treatment at our New York fertility center opt for PGS to improve their odds of having a healthy baby. Because these screening procedures can also reveal the gender of each embryo, they choose to take advantage of all the available information when choosing which embryos to transfer.